Fancy having your genome sequenced? It’s becoming affordable, and 2010 will see the launch of a wave of genetic discovery that could turn it into a purchase worth making.
In the coming months, plummeting costs will allow gene hunters to start routinely working with complete human genome sequences. These should start to illuminate the “dark matter” of the genome – the as yet unknown genetic influences on our health that are missed by current scans.
When , co-discoverer of the double-helix structure of DNA, had his entire genome sequenced in 2007 it cost around $1 million. The price tag has already dropped by a factor of 10, and driving costs even lower is one goal of the , which is offering $10 million to the first team to sequence 100 human genomes in 10 days for less than $10,000 apiece.
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Leading the way to affordable genomics is a company that isn’t even competing for the prize: the California biotech is opening a facility that it says will churn out 10,000 human genome sequences by the end of the year, at around $5000 per genome. A rival outfit, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, says it will sequence entire genomes for $12,000.
Not quite affordable for most of us, then. But 2010 will be the year when sequencing becomes routine, as researchers scour entire genomes in search of mutations that influence our susceptibility to common diseases. If you can’t wait, you can go for a quick scan of the million or so common “spelling mistakes” in the genome – though these single nucleotide polymorphisms don’t come close to encompassing the vast array of mutations that influence our health.
Even having your complete genome wouldn’t leave you much the wiser – for now. But give geneticists a few years to pore over thousands of full sequences, and we probably will. By then, a complete genome sequence should be cheaper than a plasma TV.
